Currently have an HTC Evo, my contract is up and am looking for an upgrade.
Is an HTC One-M8 a good option? Any other suggestions welcome.
Is an HTC One-M8 a good option? Any other suggestions welcome.
New Phone on Sprint
- Thread starter Erwinn
- Start date
Yes the M8 is good. Read reviews about the camera though and see if you are OK with it.
Get the M8, Galaxy S5, or iPhone 5s.
Get the M8, Galaxy S5, or iPhone 5s.
crashtestdummy
Platinum Member
- Feb 18, 2010
- 2,893
- 0
- 0
Consider someone like T-Mobile, AT&T, or one of their MVNOs.
If you REALLY want to stay with Sprint, consider getting a Nexus 5 or Moto X off-contract and rolling with that. If you get the Nexus 5 from the Play Store, you'll have the bonus of being able to switch to another carrier any time you want.
If you REALLY want to stay with Sprint, consider getting a Nexus 5 or Moto X off-contract and rolling with that. If you get the Nexus 5 from the Play Store, you'll have the bonus of being able to switch to another carrier any time you want.
If you stay with sprint these are the things you need to look for in a sprint phone
1) Make sure the phone is spark compatible, this means the phone is using the most frequencies that Sprint is capable to use. Spark is a marketing term made by sprint to advertise those phones have the greatest frequency range. More frequency range means faster speeds and bettter signal for your phone.
Spark phones are able to use the following frequencies for lte/4g 800MHz, 1900MHz, 2500MHz. Another way to say those frequencies is called the lte bands so look for phones that can use band 25 (1900 mhz), band 26 (800 mhz), and band 41 (2500 mhz).
2) Make sure the phone is using the snapdragon 800 or 801 cpu/soc/chipset. This means you are going to get the fastest computer speed on the market right now. The snapdragon 800/801 also had much better battery life measurements than the older snapdragon cpus.
3) Form Factor, make sure you find the phone comfortable and how it fits in your hand. Sure a bigger screen or larger battery has it advantages but the phone needs to be comfortable to use.
4) Make sure the screen is at least 720p, while 1080p screens have slight improvements in sharpness most people can't tell the difference.
5) Make sure the battery life is going to be good enough for you.
6) Price. If you can get a lot better deal on the phone by getting x phone vs y phone and it meats the previous 5 criteria then go for it.
7) Everything else. Things such as camera, speakers, etc all phones are slightly different and some are better than others in marginal ways, every phone you get will better than the htc evo, htc evo 3d, or htc evo lte in every way. We are talking about a huge upgrade.
-------------------
Or just get an Iphone 5s, that said the new iphone will be out in about 4 months and will have a bigger screen
-------------------
Good phones
Nexus 5
Moto X
HTC One M8
Samsung Galaxy S5
LG G2 (the new LG G3 will be coming out soon)
There are probably more that I am forgetting, each of the above phones have their own advantages and disadvantages. Now I am not sure if all the phones listed above are spark compatible, if I recall they are all new enough that they should be but I am not a 100% sure and I haven't done my own research on the frequency to double check. Now for example the samsung galaxy s4 was not originally spark compatible for it is too old but sprint released an updated version where they had qualcomm the person who put the cellphone chip inside it with an updated cellphone radio chip which could access more frequencies thus if you buy a samsung galaxy s4 used or refurbished you may or may not have the spark compatible s4.
One nice thing about the Nexus 5 besides price, speed, features, is that google purposefully made it a carrier unlocked device as well as both cdma and gsm compatible so one phone in the us works on sprint, t-mobile, and at&t. Thus if you get a nexus 5 you can use it on sprint and then if you want to try another network or provider you can just swap the sim card and the phone works thus you can for example try out the $30 dollar walmart t-mobile plan and see if the coverage in your area is good.
Most other phones are purposefully dumb down with either the limited cell phone radio chips and/or carrier hardware locks so you do not try to switch carriers and keep the phone or even try out the competition.
1) Make sure the phone is spark compatible, this means the phone is using the most frequencies that Sprint is capable to use. Spark is a marketing term made by sprint to advertise those phones have the greatest frequency range. More frequency range means faster speeds and bettter signal for your phone.
Spark phones are able to use the following frequencies for lte/4g 800MHz, 1900MHz, 2500MHz. Another way to say those frequencies is called the lte bands so look for phones that can use band 25 (1900 mhz), band 26 (800 mhz), and band 41 (2500 mhz).
2) Make sure the phone is using the snapdragon 800 or 801 cpu/soc/chipset. This means you are going to get the fastest computer speed on the market right now. The snapdragon 800/801 also had much better battery life measurements than the older snapdragon cpus.
3) Form Factor, make sure you find the phone comfortable and how it fits in your hand. Sure a bigger screen or larger battery has it advantages but the phone needs to be comfortable to use.
4) Make sure the screen is at least 720p, while 1080p screens have slight improvements in sharpness most people can't tell the difference.
5) Make sure the battery life is going to be good enough for you.
6) Price. If you can get a lot better deal on the phone by getting x phone vs y phone and it meats the previous 5 criteria then go for it.
7) Everything else. Things such as camera, speakers, etc all phones are slightly different and some are better than others in marginal ways, every phone you get will better than the htc evo, htc evo 3d, or htc evo lte in every way. We are talking about a huge upgrade.
-------------------
Or just get an Iphone 5s, that said the new iphone will be out in about 4 months and will have a bigger screen
-------------------
Good phones
Nexus 5
Moto X
HTC One M8
Samsung Galaxy S5
LG G2 (the new LG G3 will be coming out soon)
There are probably more that I am forgetting, each of the above phones have their own advantages and disadvantages. Now I am not sure if all the phones listed above are spark compatible, if I recall they are all new enough that they should be but I am not a 100% sure and I haven't done my own research on the frequency to double check. Now for example the samsung galaxy s4 was not originally spark compatible for it is too old but sprint released an updated version where they had qualcomm the person who put the cellphone chip inside it with an updated cellphone radio chip which could access more frequencies thus if you buy a samsung galaxy s4 used or refurbished you may or may not have the spark compatible s4.
One nice thing about the Nexus 5 besides price, speed, features, is that google purposefully made it a carrier unlocked device as well as both cdma and gsm compatible so one phone in the us works on sprint, t-mobile, and at&t. Thus if you get a nexus 5 you can use it on sprint and then if you want to try another network or provider you can just swap the sim card and the phone works thus you can for example try out the $30 dollar walmart t-mobile plan and see if the coverage in your area is good.
Most other phones are purposefully dumb down with either the limited cell phone radio chips and/or carrier hardware locks so you do not try to switch carriers and keep the phone or even try out the competition.
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Yep....Leave Sprint if at all possible. Nobody I know who has Sprint is happy with the service.
AstroManLuca
Lifer
- Jun 24, 2004
- 15,628
- 5
- 81
This all day. You definitely want a Spark enabled phone.
http://faster.sprint.com/2014/01/07...es/?INTMKT=MA:MS:103013:SparkHub:Home_Content
Pretty typical Spark speeds:
cmdrdredd
Lifer
- Dec 12, 2001
- 27,052
- 357
- 126
This all day. You definitely want a Spark enabled phone.
http://faster.sprint.com/2014/01/07...es/?INTMKT=MA:MS:103013:SparkHub:Home_Content
Pretty typical Spark speeds:
Except I don't think all areas will get that type of speed.
Those are nice speeds for sure. But Sprint is always the slowest to deploy new hardware, overcrowds the most, and have the worst 2G, 3G services.
Even when I was on LTE with 5 bars of signal, my internet would sometimes still not work. When I wasn't on LTE, I was on 56k speeds.
gmaster456
Golden Member
- Sep 7, 2011
- 1,877
- 0
- 71
I would go with the HTC One M8. Whether or not you decide to stay with sprint is up to you though, I do know quite a lot of people that have had issues with its service though. If you want to go to a prepaid MVNO I would look at the Nexus 5, Moto X or a GPe device.
Definitely not, but the difference means it makes sense to look for a Spark enabled phone if you stay on Sprint.
Now one reason everyone is suggestion moving away from Sprint is that Sprint in the past has had the worst network and people have been burnt by Sprint. Sprint is now under new management and it is possibly they will vastly upgrade their network but even if they spend the money now it will take a couple of years to implement and people buy phones on 2 year contracts etc. Why suffer now about a possibility that the future Sprint may be good.
---------------------
There are four big factors that determine the quality of the network and the quality of the call signal and Sprint out of the big 4 is either number 3 or 4 in all those categories and thus has the worse network. Now I only care about the big 4 companies networks for in the end this is a rapidly changing market and it is going through consolidation where the smaller company networks is being bought by the bigger company networks for their is greater efficiency and thus greater profit for being big. Thus we will see the loss of companies such as MetroPCS, Cricket, Clear, etc. That said we are still seeing competition with something that called MVNOs where smaller companies "rent" bandwidth on the big company networks and then resell it to the end user.
Sprint has some awesome spectrum now with how much spectrum they been buying up. They also now have a new owner who in theory could spend a lot of money in the us trying to gain market share. In theory they could shake things up but it will take years to do so.
T-Mobile on the other hand is shaking things up right now, and is being very competitive with their prices and user experience delivered right now, they are sacrificing short term profits trying to gain market share and so far they have been gaining market share. Long term we do not know if T-Mobile will be profitable.
The best thing that could happen to all cell phone customers is that if T-Mobile is bought by Sprint and the T-Mobile philosophy is transferred to Sprint and that T-Mobile tryies to make the wireless phone company business overall less profitable by giving a better experience to the users and lower prices.
The worse thing that could to happen to all cell phone customers is that if T-Mobile is bought by Sprint and that Sprint keeps their old/status quo philosophy. We get less competition in the market and less pressure on the big 2, AT&T and Verizon to keep rates low.
---------------------
There are four big factors that determine the quality of the network and the quality of the call signal and Sprint out of the big 4 is either number 3 or 4 in all those categories and thus has the worse network. Now I only care about the big 4 companies networks for in the end this is a rapidly changing market and it is going through consolidation where the smaller company networks is being bought by the bigger company networks for their is greater efficiency and thus greater profit for being big. Thus we will see the loss of companies such as MetroPCS, Cricket, Clear, etc. That said we are still seeing competition with something that called MVNOs where smaller companies "rent" bandwidth on the big company networks and then resell it to the end user.
- Speed of adoption new technologies with the cell phone transmitters. New technologies allow much more efficient use of limited resources allowing greater bandwidth on a network and thus allowing either better speeds to the end user or better utilization of bandwidth and thus more users without crappy speed. Verizon is the leader in this currently though T-Mobile since being under new management has been very aggressive with this. Sprint is currently the slowest of the big 4 companies
- Location of the Cell Phone Towers. Verizon and AT&T are the best out there. T-Mobile is one of the worse but if you have a contract AT&T you can roam on AT&T. T-Mobile works good in the city.
- Frequency of the Cell Phone Towers. Lower Frequency signal is better at penetrating buildings that is one reason Verizon had better in call reception a few years ago for they were one of the first companies to get sub 1000 mhz cell phone frequency.
- The backhaul of the cell phone towers. Aka how the internet gets to the cell phone towers, this is the biggest problem with Sprint. They do not have enough fiber connecting their cell phone towers and instead use the older and cheaper to implement microwave technology. Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile have all been much more aggressive at laying fiber to the cell phone sites for those fiber wires will be useful for decades and long term will save the company lots of money but it is a big upfront investment. Sprint has been instead been buying up spectrum and being conservative with the backhaul.
Sprint has some awesome spectrum now with how much spectrum they been buying up. They also now have a new owner who in theory could spend a lot of money in the us trying to gain market share. In theory they could shake things up but it will take years to do so.
T-Mobile on the other hand is shaking things up right now, and is being very competitive with their prices and user experience delivered right now, they are sacrificing short term profits trying to gain market share and so far they have been gaining market share. Long term we do not know if T-Mobile will be profitable.
The best thing that could happen to all cell phone customers is that if T-Mobile is bought by Sprint and the T-Mobile philosophy is transferred to Sprint and that T-Mobile tryies to make the wireless phone company business overall less profitable by giving a better experience to the users and lower prices.
The worse thing that could to happen to all cell phone customers is that if T-Mobile is bought by Sprint and that Sprint keeps their old/status quo philosophy. We get less competition in the market and less pressure on the big 2, AT&T and Verizon to keep rates low.
cmdrdredd
Lifer
- Dec 12, 2001
- 27,052
- 357
- 126
The real problem sprint faces IMO is they let everyone else surpass them in terms of network expansion and they are going to remove their unlimited plans in the near future. So they are losing mind share. A couple of my friends are on sprint and refuse to leave since they are on some old plan that is real cheap. I am curious what they will do when sprint tries to remove their unlimited data next time they go to upgrade their phone.
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